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Keywords: Human Shield

  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia's ten wasted years of war

    • Tony Smith
    • 19 March 2013
    14 Comments

    Gone are the days when Australians believed everyone deserved a fair go: the principle that 'might is right' has replaced the ideals of equity and justice in the national psyche. It is not surprising that after engaging in costly military actions over a decade Australians are more fearful now than when we invaded Iraq in 2003. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    George Orwell's chicken feed solution

    • Brian Matthews
    • 01 March 2013
    4 Comments

    'On this day in 1939: Belgium signed a trade treaty with France, 71 people died in the Black Friday bush fire, and Orwell's chickens laid two eggs.' Orwell's domestic diaries seem trivial, but it is wrong to assume he saw his recording of vegetables, egg laying and other small-holder concerns as dwarfed by the great world. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Vegemite interrogation on the Prague night train

    • Anne M. Carson
    • 19 February 2013

    Cash-strapped, post midnight. Transport police rifle our rucksacks, suspicious of backpackers. One prises open my Kodak canister, sniffs, says 'ach!', fires Czech questions at me. 'Vegemite fur frustuck,' I say, trying to convince Vegemite is not hash resin. I smile the smile of someone who doesn't know how bad it can get.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Getting personal with Anzac Day

    • Philip Harvey
    • 25 April 2012
    16 Comments

    Should I even be saying all this to people I have never met? What do I say? How far do I go? My paternal grandfather, Edgar, was not only an Anzac but among those who landed nearly 100 years ago at the Turkish cove. Even among my family his experiences are still largely passed over in silence.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    WikiLeaks and the killing of bin Laden

    • Michael Mullins
    • 09 May 2011
    22 Comments

    One day we're told he was armed and used his wife as a human shield. The next, that he was unarmed, and that his unarmed wife rushed at a US attacker. WikiLeaks could be the only organisation we can expect to furnish us with reliable information on important events.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Gen Y, iPods and isolation

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 13 April 2011
    1 Comment

    Pavel's meanderings are soundtracked by rock music blaring through his earphones. Increasingly the iPod seems to symbolise some nonchalant skein that isolates self-centred youths from the world around them.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    CEOs in sleeping bags

    • John Falzon
    • 23 June 2010
    13 Comments

    Last week CEOs across Australia 'slept out' to raise awareness and funds for homelessness. The kindness expressed through such charity makes us a richer nation. But charity is no substitute for the justice needed to prevent homelessness.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    After wonderland

    • P. S. Cottier and Jeff Klooger
    • 08 June 2010
    1 Comment

    Since furniture regained its proper size .. and animals ceased to speak .. since teapots evicted rodents .. and the Queen became so very nice .. I find myself looking back ... Everything now is normaler and normaler

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  • MEDIA

    Sri Lanka's war of propaganda

    • Paul Farrell
    • 26 May 2009
    6 Comments

    The Sri Lankan Government has been accused of endangering and killing civilians. The Tamil Tigers have been accused of using civilians as human shields. While the fog of war may be dissipating, media on the ground continue to be stifled.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Imagining peace at Christmas

    • Val Yule
    • 18 December 2007
    6 Comments

    On an anniversary of September 11, President Bush attended a church service that included the Beatitudes as one of the readings. If the preacher had continued on a few verses, he would have been telling the President and people to love their enemies and do good to those that hate them.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The human rights cost of intelligence activities

    • Bill Calcutt
    • 17 October 2007

    A primary objective of terrorism is to engender disproportionate fear in the community, and to act as a catalyst for negative changes. Terrorists can therefore be highly effective without having to undertake terrorism operations.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Justifying civil disobedience

    • Michael Mullins
    • 13 June 2007
    3 Comments

    Rural landowners are planning a day of "civil obedience" on 1 July to assert what they believe is their right to clear native vegetation from their land. How is this different from the civil disobedience of anti-war protestors such as the Pine Gap Four?

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